Brown Marmorated Stink Bug SWAT Team Leader Q&A
April 4, 2014 
Trials at the USDA Appalachian Fruit Research in Kearneysville, WV, are establishing baseline treatment thresholds for brown marmorated stink bug. (Photo credit: Tracy Laskey)
American Fruit Grower talks with Tracy Leskey, the USDA scientist based in Kearneysville, WV, who is leading the national team of scientists battling the brown marmorated stink bug.
Q: You’ve mentioned that one of the goals for 2014 is working with suppliers to bring pheromone lures to the market. What are your expectations?
Leskey: We’ve been working with a number of companies and are assisting those interested in commercializing pheromone-based products. Our hope is that companies will be able to commercialize monitoring lures that combine the two-component brown marmorated stink bug (BMSB) pheromone with the synergist (MDT) and also formulations that can be used in attract and kill systems. Obviously, we still have more to do in terms of optimizing release rate, longevity, etc., but we know that combining these two stimuli allows for reliable season-long detection of BMSB.
Q: How will the Farm Bill passing affect SCRI funding?
Leskey: We are currently waiting for the release of the RFA (Requests For Application) and will be submitting a renewal application for an additional two years of funding. NIFA (National Institute for Food and Agriculture) allows for five-year projects, so that would take us to 2016 and continue to develop tools to monitor and manage BMSB, building on the knowledge we have gained over the past few years.
Q: At Mid-Atlantic Fruit & Vegetable Convention, you indicated this winter’s low temps might be beneficial for BMSB. Could you elaborate on this?
Leskey: The bugs overwinter in a state of reproductive diapause. Under cool temperatures, their metabolic rate is lower and they require fewer resources (their fat stores or body fat) to keep them going. It’s kind of like suspended animation. If temperatures remain cool, they remain inactive and can just wait for spring.
We believe that rapid fluctuations in temperature could be harmful — a warm-up followed by a cold snap, as the bugs may not have time to re-adjust and “super-cool” to deal with lower temperatures. However, all of this needs more work to truly establish the impact of winter conditions on overall survival.
Q: Can you talk about your research goals for 2014, including threshold trials?
Leskey: We will repeat our threshold trials at the lab to establish baseline thresholds that could be used to make management decisions. Essentially, we have established three-trap-based treatment thresholds: 1) a low threshold at 1 adult/trap; 2) a moderate at 10 adults/trap; and 3) a high at 20 adults/trap.
These are cumulative and once a trap reaches a prescribed threshold, this triggers a spray that includes a material considered to be effective against BMSB. Treatments are put on as an Agriculture Risk Management (ARM) and repeated seven days later. The threshold is then reset. We are comparing these with blocks treated weekly with a BMSB material and those that are not managed for BMSB. In 2013, we found that using our moderate threshold, we reduced applications by 40% compared with weekly sprays, with no significant difference in damage.
In addition, in collaboration with Chris Bergh at Virginia Tech, we are establishing season-long patterns of capture of BMSB with traps located next to specific landscape types — woods, row crops, other fruit crops, etc. Based on our work in 2013, we established that the greatest pressure to orchards comes from wood lots — and this is the case throughout the season.
Q: Is BMSB becoming more prominent as an orchard pest in other areas?
Leskey: We had some reports of damage in western North Carolina, the Hudson Valley of New York, western Oregon and Washington, Tennessee, and Kentucky. This wasn’t just in tree fruit but in other specialty crops. However, these are still limited to specific areas within these states, but demonstrates that BMSB is becoming established in other parts of the country and threatening specialty crops.
Q: If BMSB becomes a significant problem this year, what are a grower’s best options for management?
Leskey: I’ll leave this one to (other entomologists), but just add that growers will still need to rely on insecticides. We know which materials are most effective.
Certainly, baited traps can be used as a guide as to the presence and relative abundance of bugs in close proximity to an orchard, but we still have more work to do to establish trap-based treatment thresholds.
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